The Case of the Vampire's Kiss
by The Third Gerrideb
Summary: An unrecorded tale in the adventures of Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes: Is there truly a vampire haunting the streets of London? And what does it mean when it turns its eye to Dr. Watson? Please enjoy and review :
1. Chapter 1

_**(From the journal of Jonathan Longstreet and Dr. John H. Watson)**_

It was a singular case, so singular, in fact, that I had determined it should never be written. However, it has had a strange hold on me, this singular case, this tale which makes all fiction pale…which makes me pale. I have determined, then, or have been driven, perhaps, to record it somewhere and so have borrowed this journal which belonged once to Holmes' client. It contains the beginning portion of this strange tale and now will contain its conclusion. What I will do with it when it is written, I do not know, but I know no one should ever read it – not the audience of the Strand, not Mary and absolutely never Holmes.

What marked the beginning of the case was a visit, not at Baker's Street, but at my practice and the late evening visitor was not a client of my esteemed friend, but a patient named Jonathan Long. An anemic, he was pale and delicate but for his intense, brilliant gaze that shone with a power his frail body could not itself express. He had sat quietly through my examination, answered my questions with a soft, tired voice, but when I turned away, I would turn back to find him watching me. I paid it no mind. I had seen a similar watch from other patients and it usually meant a deeper question, a more pressing reason for their medical visit that they were vacillating in voicing. At the time, that is all I believed it to be.

"A trip to the country perhaps," I suggested, "It would do you good to get away from the city, breathe the fresh air. Perhaps you and your wife…?"

The answer was quiet. "I have no wife."

"Then a friend or a relative, perhaps?" He didn't answer, but his gaze turned up to meet mine. Never before have I seen such loneliness that flashed there and gone as he smiled and shook his head knowingly. Perhaps that is the reason I pressed him, "Surely, someone…?"

His expression became far away, dreamy. "I suppose if this were one of your marvelous adventures from The Strand, there would be no such question. There is always "someone" there in the stories, is there not, Doctor Watson?" He said and to that softly smiling face, I had no answer.

I closed up my practice soon after that night and found myself, not at home with Mary, as I had every intention of being, but at Bakers Street, with none other than Sherlock Holmes. Well, we were in the rooms together, but I'm not sure Holmes realized I was there, so enthralled was he in his chemical experimentations. After a time, as I sat smoking by the fire, lost in thought, even I might not have known he was there…But he was. Odd as it was to say, this commonplace event was at that moment, such a profound realization that I sat bolt upright in my seat, turned hurriedly to tell him as if I were the one who had just made the most unimaginable of discoveries…

Only to be abruptly cutoff by the arrival of Inspector Lestrade. Never before had I seen such a look on his face. Pure panic lined the wide, dark eyes, his cheeks were flushed and his breathing irregular from running. He did not wait to be acknowledged, but flung himself at Holmes, grabbed my friend by the arms and ejaculated, "If you ever were needed, Mr. Holmes…Please….Please…."

I had risen, but Holmes spoke calmly, gently, "Why, Lestrade, you look like you have seen a ghost."

"Not…not…a…." Lestrade shook himself and I tried to usher the gasping inspector into a seat. When he refused, I brought him a brandy which he accepted gratefully. "I wasn't sure whether to come to you or a priest, Mr. Holmes. I still am not sure…Please. Will you come?"

Sherlock Holmes paused, set down his test tubes, and slowly, something between excitement and curiosity brightening his face, turned to me. Nothing would have changed had I not gone with him that night, and yet I cannot help but think that was the moment, the very moment, when I made my greatest mistake.

I nodded at him and when he turned back to Lestrade he said, "We will."

_**To Be Continued…**_


	2. Chapter 2

"A graveyard, Lestrade?" I asked.

"Then there truly was a ghost?" Holmes mused.

To this, not turning to us as he walked between the marble and stone, Lestrade answered, "No. Not a ghost."

'Then what are we here to see?" Holmes asked petulantly. Lestrade was not one to keep the cat in the bag, but on this peculiar occasion, he seemed strangely tightlipped about the whole matter. Perhaps to Holmes the outburst was a matter of impatience in the delay of data from the inspector, but my own unspoken questions were more to do with the unease I felt as the moon came from behind the clouds and illuminated the cemetery and its garden of stone angels.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you…"

"Can't tell us?" Holmes cried.

"I can't, gentlemen, because I do not know what I have seen." Something caught his attention ahead, a blaze of lantern light and silhouettes of police constables moving like shadows between the tombs. "There. We're there, Mr. Holmes. You can see for yourself now. I just pray you can tell me what exactly it is."

The lantern light we approached ringed a modest tomb. Perhaps the nervous movement of the constables had arrested my attention, for it was not only Holmes had knelt to the ground that I saw the body of the young woman. She lay on the open doorstep of the tomb, wearing her nightclothes, a milky shadow upon the stone stairs. She was very young and beautiful, her eyes closed and head back in such a way that she seemed sleeping only. What could have killed her I could not say, I could not see until Holmes touched my arm and pulled me down beside him. As if answering my unvoiced thoughts, he gently pushed the young woman's hair from the side of her neck and looked up to watch my face.

As my eyes widened, he said, "Not a ghost, then."

Unbelieving, I peered at the red marks upon the slope of her neck and then up at Holmes, "A vampire?"

In reply, Holmes stood and entered the tomb. I followed behind and found him chuckling softly as he gestured towards Lestrade and the thing into which the inspector so ruefully gazed. "This is indeed a scene more for your more lurid romantic tales than for my case files, Watson, is it not?"

Turning to meet his eyes, I said, "That coffin is new."

"That coffin," said Sherlock Holmes, "is empty."

_**To Be Continued…**_


	3. Chapter 3

For the next few days, I was preoccupied by my wife, Mary, who had taken a chill and had been ensconced in bed. When she had recovered enough that she could smile knowingly at me as I sat in vigil at her bedside, she pressed my hand and said, "Go see him, John."

"I can't, you are…" I began.

"I am well again, thanks to you. Now go. Tell Mr. Holmes I wish him luck on this new case if it is as much a worry as I have seen on your face."

"I love you."

Mary kissed me then. "Go on." She said.

And so I went. By then, the hour was late. The streets were more dark than light and the moon was small and waning in the sky. My thoughts were on Holmes and on the empty coffin, the young woman with teeth marks on her throat as I made my way to Bakers Street. Indeed, by the time I made my way there, the rooms seemed the more bright and cheery for the darkness of these strange circumstances. I found myself eager to question Holmes on what he had brought to light in the last couple of days.

However, as I entered the rooms, I found that Holmes wasn't alone. A young man sat with his back turned to me as Holmes greeted me with the barest of looks, the swiftest of smiles. There was something oddly familiar about the outline of the young man's shoulders, about the mane of thick hair that curled at the base of his neck. "I'm sorry." I said, "Should I come back later…?"  
"Not at all, my dear Watson." Said Holmes. "Take a seat, I think our client would appreciate your ever able insight into this matter."  
"If that is alright with…" I began, but hesitated. By this time, I had come round and saw that Holmes' client was none other than Jonathan Long, my lonely, pale patient. "Mr. Long…."

Sherlock Holmes interjected then. "Either you have met before, Watson, or your powers of deduction have indeed immensely improved in the meanwhile."

"We have met." Said Jonathan Long. "Good evening, Doctor Watson."

"Decided not to take the country trip, I see. Are you well?"

The man I knew as Jonathan Long smiled. "It is not that I have decided to stay as circumstances have decided me."

"Circumstances…?"

"A missing person." Said Holmes.

"My sister." Jonathan Long said with an absolutely expressionless face. "I have given Mr. Holmes the details. If he will take the case?"

Holmes lit a pipe he had gathered as I had exchanged words with the pale faced young man. "He will think on it." He said.

"Marvelous." Said his client and with a spurt of energy I would never had put to him, he sprang up, thanked Holmes so profusely I saw my friend smile in amusement. He then turned to me and took my hand and said, "I know it will be alright now. Thank you."

Then, like that, he was gone, springing down the seventeen steps and out the front door with all the vital energy of a sprinting tiger. In his wake, Holmes laughed and I slumped into my chair. "Interesting fellow." Said Holmes.

"He was a patient of mine. An anemic"

"Obviously." Holmes said with a raised eyebrow.

"He had told me he had no relatives."

"Then he has lied twice to you and he has lied once to me."

"But why do such a thing?"

"Why indeed...?" Holmes gazed down the empty hallway, his thoughts blazing behind his grey eyes until he shrugged dismissively and seemed to set the puzzle aside. "How is Mrs. Watson?"

"Much better. I think she was worried I'd make myself ill thinking of you and the Case of the Vampire's Kiss."

Holmes scowled. "Tell me you are not already casting the case into writing for your adoring public."

"Your adoring public, Holmes. They do not read the stories for my powers of romantic drivel, as you would put it."

In his mercurial fashion, Holmes' expression suddenly softened. "Nonsense, Watson. They, like I, no doubt know that Sherlock Holmes would be lost without his Boswell."

I had no reply to that, not out loud, at least.

"The case which you so subtly named, does indeed grow deep, Watson. Lestrade has discerned the identity of the missing resident of the tomb, a Mr. Jonathan Longstreet."  
"Long…" I began.

And Holmes concluded with the glow of his pipe red and bright, "Street."

I laughed. "You cannot be suggesting that Jonathan Long and Jonathan Longstreet are the same man."

Holmes shrugged. "Perhaps it is a coincidence, but a pretty one. One day a Jonathan Longstreet, an anemic who died a week ago at the age of 23, thin, with thick blonde hair and startling dark, brown eyes, vanishes from his tomb on the steps of which lay his dead sister and a few days later, into our consulting room enters Mr. Jonathan Long, an diagnosed "anemic", surely no older than 23, thin with thick blonde hair and startling dark, brown eyes who claims he is missing a sister…Quite a coincidence."

"But you yourself said that Longstreet was dead."

"I did, didn't I?"

"I examined Mr. Long."

"And?"

"Holmes, you know very well that I found he was alive. Have you not consulted Longstreet's surviving family?"

"There are none. But I have endeavored to discover that Mr. Longstreet had not been long back to England before he met his untimely and tragic end."

"You shouldn't grin like that if you want me to ask you where he had been traveling."

"Then I won't ask. I will tell. Our Mr. Longstreet had just returned from a trip to the Carpathian Mountains. To Transylvania, Watson."

_**To Be Continued…**_


	4. Chapter 4

"You ask an impossible thing. It cannot be done. You have found the outer orbits of my powers and I am afraid I can go no further, my friend."

"Holmes, you do not have to read it if you do not want to. It was a suggestion, not a death sentence." I said as Holmes gingerly handed back my much thumbed through copy of "Dracula".

"Was it?" Holmes said seriously. "Never mind. The book is meaningless to our cases. There is no vampire…Watson you look awful, my dear fellow."

"I couldn't sleep last night. But what do you mean? Last night you were connecting Longstreet, deceased, to Long, living, and tracing them, or him, or whatever it might be, back to the very origin of vampires and today…"

"Why did you not sleep?"

"Dreams. And you didn't answer my question."

"Dreams of what, exactly?" I stopped eating my breakfast and regarded my friend over his cup of coffee.

"Does it matter?"

"Call it curiosity."

"I call it unlike you, Holmes. First vampires and now dreams. If this gets out your reputation for logic and reason above all else may suffer."

"Unlikely." He set down his cup and regarded me. "Now. You will tell me about your dream and I will tell you the newest clue that has found its way into my hand."

I frowned, but after a moment, I answered him. "It wasn't so much a dream as a sensation – as if I were being watched as I slept."

"And Mrs. Watson?" Holmes asked, his face a mask of concentration.

I shook my head. "I had come home late last night and found I was not tired. Not wanting to wake her, I made a few notes on the case before falling asleep on the couch in my study. It seemed to me…"

"Yes?"

"I heard a voice, calling to me."

"My word, Watson, you are blushing."

"I can only imagine that you'll now tell me I've let my imagination run away with me between vampires, empty tombs and anemic patients who may or may not have risen from the dead."

Sherlock Holmes did not smile, but said in a grim, low voice, "That, my friend, I do not believe I will do."

"Holmes…?"

"But now," Holmes continued, ignoring my questioning look, "As promised, I will show you the newest clue that has found its way into my hand…That is if you're done with breakfast?"

"Yes."

"Good. Take your coat."

"We're going somewhere?"

"To see someone."

"Where?"

"The morgue."

_**To Be Continued…**_


	5. Chapter 5

Lestrade was waiting, less impatiently than expected. "You are late, Mr. Holmes." He accused, but it was impossible to miss the relieved note in his voice as he ushered us through the cold, checkered paved rooms of the morgue.

"My apologies, Lestrade." Holmes said as we arrived to our destination-although not the one I'd expected."

"Surely," Said I, "This is not the young woman from the cemetery."

"No, Doctor." Lestrade said hesitantly and he glanced in question at Holmes who stood bent over the body of a man, his eyes, surely, catching all the things it was his special ability to see, that is, everything. "Didn't Mr. Holmes tell you?" There was no answer from Holmes and with a mild shake of his head, Lestrade cleared his throat and explained. "The body of young Ms. Sarah Longstreet, I'm afraid is missing."

"Missing?" I gasped.

"Yes." Holmes added in a vaguely bored voice, "The very night it was brought here. One more grotesque detail for your story, Watson."

"A grotesque detail, indeed, considering…"

Lestrade nodded gravely in agreement, but Holmes chuckled at that, his hands touching the neck of the dead man and the puckering scar that stood in stark contrast to his white flesh. "If she has indeed risen from the dead as a vampire that would indeed be a grotesque detail, but in this case, I'm afraid there is a mortal explanation."

"Someone stole her body."

"Exactly."

"But why?"

Finally lifting his gaze, Holmes peered hard at me, all his intensity plain. "Why indeed?" He said.

"Can you make anything of it, Mr. Holmes?" Lestrade asked, breaking what had become the almost hypnotic concentration of my friend as he had studied my face. I reigned myself in as he looked away, knocked off balance by the depths of the gaze, the level of worry I had seen.

"Yes, but I do not yet fully understand how it fits together…The details, of course, include that he was a doctor, mildly successful, highly sociable, hated his wife's multiple cats and died without a struggle and with only these small wounds as any sign of external circumstances." He waved off the silence that invited elaboration of his observations. "Tell me Lestrade, what details have you that make you so disconcerted in knowing?"

"It can't be anything, Mr. Holmes."

"And yet you think it is. That is why you sent for me with such urgency so very early this morning."

"His wife thought it was important. I don't know what to make of it. It was the very last thing she had said to me. She'd run to catch me as I was leaving and told me I'd think her mad, but she had to tell someone. She had read about the Longstreet case in the paper, you see, but even if she hadn't, she said it would have stuck in her mind. How could it not stick in her mind…?"

"She saw something?" I suggested.

"Someone." Holmes said and Lestrade went pale, shivered. I watched in amazement and growing unease. For Lestrade to be so affected upon any detail preyed darkly upon my imagination.

And so, when Lestrade finally did answer, although it did set my heart pounding, it did not surprise me. I expected it, like a man watching the last dying ember of day bleed into night. "She said the night he died, they had a late visitor, a patient neither had ever expected to see again, well, as the doctor had been the attending physician on the patient's death bed you see. The patient, gentlemen, was Jonathan Longstreet."

The name echoed hollowly in the chambers of the morgue and it seemed it would continue to resound like a bell struck, but then Holmes spoke and brought both myself and the inspector back to ourselves. "Of course it was." He said. "Come, Watson. Good morning, Lestrade."

"Do you have nothing you can tell me of this matter, Mr. Holmes?"

"Of course I do, Inspector Lestrade, this matter does not involve the dark forces of the supernatural, merely the dark workings of very mortal, very human, criminal heart."

"If you say so, Mr. Holmes."

"I do say so, Lestrade." He turned and I followed, but it wasn't until we had reached the bright, airy outdoors that Holmes spoke again. "Watson, are you otherwise occupied today?"

"No."

"Then you would not object in accompanying me on a certain venue of investigation?"

"Never." I said sincerely. "But where?"

_**To Be Continued…**_


	6. Chapter 6

Where to Holmes brought me next was as far from the supernatural, from moonlit cemeteries and dull, grey morgues as could be possible. Bright morning light filtered through lace curtains. Flowers, just beginning to wilt, occupied most of the tables and yellow wallpaper warmed the whole place. There were several portraits on the wall, not very old and I found myself studying a pair of beautiful young woman, surely sisters, as Holmes crossed here and there in his investigations.

"Hardly the home of a vampire." I murmured.

"Do not sound so disappointed, Watson." Holmes answered and I turned to see him standing near a small desk, reading through a handful of correspondence.

"I am not disappointed."

"You were expecting the residence of Mr. and Miss Longstreet to be a rather remote and moody estate, where the sun can never quite reach, am I not correct?"

"It would have been rather more fitting than modest rooms in the middle of London, I should think."

Holmes laughed at that and continued to shift through the papers. As he did so, something caught my eye and I came to stand next to him and lift from the desk a small, leather bound journal around which was encircled a golden locket and chain. Setting the necklace aside and opening the journal, I began to read the flowing script of none other than Jonathan Longstreet.

For how long those strange pages capture my attention, I cannot say. The diary did not go far back at all. In fact, it began the day Longstreet returned from his travels abroad. Those initial pages were written in a steady hand, a hand I would go so far as to say was rather happy, but as the entries continued, the slope of the hand became uneven, shaken as the events cumulated into a dark blot on the page, full of terror and madness…and beyond. "Holmes." I whispered in a breathless voice and found that Holmes had been watching me. There was no expression on his face as he took the journal from my hand and began to read where I had been pointing in earnest.

"_All fantasy becomes reality. I have woken, been brought back by a kiss, now I have met him, the doctor from the stories. I have met him and long to see him again, but what of Sarah? She does not understand_." Holmes read aloud.

"That is from Tuesday. The day of his appointment with me."

"And the day Sarah Longstreet met her death." Holmes said without breaking his gaze from the page which clouded over evermore as he flipped through the journal. "The last entry is from today."

"Today?"

"Yes. Apparently, you were anticipated."

"I? Surely, "we"."

"No, Doctor." Here he began to read, "'_I have called to him and he seeks me out. I wait for you to find me, doctor, and for our end to always be together_.' Watson?"

"…yes, Holmes?"

Holmes had opened the locket as he spoke and showed it to me. Surely it was Jonathan Longstreet pictured within, but that was not the name I knew him by. The young, sad faced young man I recognized had introduced himself under another name. "That's Jonathan Long. But what does it all mean?"

Holmes did not answer for a time, but studying the locket and then the book, did not look at me as he spoke. "I think it means that no one will question my placement of logic and reason above all other things. You were not dreaming of someone calling to you, or of someone watching, Watson. Someone was there."

_**To Be Continued…**_


	7. Chapter 7

**_Hello! First off, thank you very, very much for everyone who read and double thank you (thank you) very much for all who reviewed! Here's the next installment! It's a bit spooky, but I hope you'll enjoy it! The mystery, dear reader, deepens..._**

That evening, once I had returned home, I was very preoccupied. What did it all mean – that was what was running through my mind. That, and the image of that house. Why the house and not the morgue, not the graveyard? Perhaps the answer to that lay in Holmes' further investigation of the Longstreets' rooms and this is what I thought of as I sat beside Mary that evening and my dinner growing cold before me…

_The two bedrooms were where to Holmes, and I following vaguely after, ventured next that morning. One room, surely that of Jonathan Longstreet himself, was plain, even bare, save the books. Books positively swarmed the place, piled high and crowded close to the walls like the pillars of some ancient palace. I studied the titles and saw everything – from Lewis Carol to Shakespeare to Poe and every author in between…_

_"_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_." I heard Holmes muse and I started at that, walked quickly over to him, grabbed the book from his hands. Holmes did not even shrug, but drifted away to peer through the window._

_I stood there, opening the volume, and read myself. In the margins were small notes, and pictures drawn over the words. Even as I began to bring this to Holmes' attention, I realized that somewhere in my own absorption, he had left me alone in that room._

_I hurried after him, letting the book fall back into place on its stack._

_"Holmes!" I called._

_"Here, Doctor." He answered and I tried not to let the breath out that escaped me. Holmes' back was to me as I entered and I am thankful for that. I did not want him to know how relieved I was to find him – like a child left behind in a dark place. "What do you see, Watson?"_

_"Nothing, Holmes."_

_"Watson, I do ask you to try again."_

_"I…" I began and for the first time forced my eyes away from him. The room had immediately a different impression on me from the last. It felt…loved, I suppose-yes, that is right. There were small pictures on a desk and a carefully painted vase upon a desk with writing implements, papers, figurines. There was a carpet. There were…well, many things in which I am sure Holmes saw whole histories. As for myself…it felt human here. Loved, as I said. That is what I thought, and this is what I said to Holmes._

_"Not the way I myself would put it, Watson."_

_"What do you see, then?"_

_"I see a room in which much time was spent."_

_"Yes."_

_"But do you see why?"_

_"I cannot say I do…"_

_"No?" Holmes turned and crossed the room. He pointed to the table near the bed and my eyes widened._

_"Medicine?"_

_"Yes. Clean towels. Bowls. Extra linen."_

_"A sick room. Jonathan Longstreet had been ill."_

_"Then why was his room not the sick room? Why force out Miss Longstreet? His room has as much light, as much air, if not as much...personality, as you put it. There is no reason for him to be here then, especially if he was a man with a chronic illness."_

_"Then…Miss Longstreet herself was ill?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Could the two illnesses not be related?"_

_"There were not two illnesses."_

_"But you said Miss Longstreet."_

_"I did." Said Holmes. "She was ill for some time, longer than the time the two young siblings had occupied these rooms." He picked up a framed portrait by the bedside – that of a young woman similar to the one I had seen in the common room. Holmes' grey eyes darkened as he peered at the picture, and although he spoke to me, I had the distinct impression his mind was far away. "Jonathan Longstreet was never the ill one, Watson. She was."_

Just then, my recollections were interrupted by my wife Mary asking if I knew my hand was laying in the potatoes. Immediately I was brought back to myself. I was at home. My wonderful wife was watching me with a half exasperated, half worried, always fond look on her face. My hand was indeed in the potatoes.

"I'm so sorry, Mary, what was that?"

"My dear John, I said that the maid has said someone is at the door for you."

"Someone?"

"John? Are you alright? You're pale as a ghost!"  
I did not have a chance to answer before a there came the sound of footsteps from the front room and in entered the maid. It is a clear indication of how badly this case, even at this early time, had already begun to affect me that I turned towards the door with more than half a certainty that Jonathan Longstreet would be standing there…but I was wrong.

"Good evening, Mrs. Watson." Said Sherlock Holmes. "Did I hear you say 'ghost'? I thank you, however, for not saying it was a 'vampire'. I can't seem to get away from those today."

_**To Be Continued…**_


	8. Chapter 8

Sometime later, Holmes and I found ourselves in my study. He seemed mismatched to the place. Baker Street with its Bohemian décor – violins and Persian slippers, celebrated criminals and jack knifes seemed more him than the paisley wallpaper and the simple writing desk that adorned this room.

"This room suits you, Watson. A very comfortable room, indeed." Said Holmes as we sat before the fire.

"Holmes, you did not come here to commend me on my study."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because if you ever had such an interest, you would have satisfied it five and a half years ago when Mary and I had first been married and moved here."

"Five and half is not _that_ long ago."

"Holmes…" I said this with far more force than I had meant and Holmes regarded me with a perfectly blank face.

"Watson...This case disturbs you, my friend?"

"It is disturbing."

"There have been stranger cases, my friend….why this one?"

"Holmes, why are you here,?"

"I spoke with the dead doctor's wife this afternoon. His name was Colbert. His wife said that he was indeed Mr. Longstreet's doctor."

"Then he had been ill?"

"So it would seem."

"And yet you are not satisfied?"

"No. There is more to it, Watson, than that."

"Is that why you are here?"

"I merely came to ask if I might spend the night here. Right here. In this very room."

"Why?"

"I did say it was a very comfortable room."

"Holmes…"

"There might not be any reason, Watson. What do you say?"

"Then there might be a reason?"

Holmes nodded. His eyes glinted with firelight. "There might."

I tried to deduce the reason, but at his impenetrable expression, I quickly relented. "Very well." I said.

That night, I dreamed someone was calling me. It was not Mary's voice, but it did belong to a woman.

I rose and followed that voice through the hallways of my sleeping house. I took my coat, and was about to put on my shoes when a shock of light and a familiar voice stopped me. The light said: "Watson?" I turned. Holmes stood at the base of the steps. He was covered in shadow except the candle he held in his hand. Stepping forward, putting a hand on my shoulder, he peered closely at my face and said, "Are you alright?"

"Yes…" I said in a rather shaky voice. "I…yes. I am. I think I am..."

_**To Be Continued…**_


	9. Chapter 9

"There really was a voice" I reasserted.

"And I said I believe you." Said Holmes, looking away from the train window and the landscape beyond that had so absorbed his attention this morning.

"Yet you said you heard nothing."

"I did hear something. I heard you."

"But not a voice."

"No."

I let perhaps a mile go by and said, quietly, "Mary did not hear anything at all." Holmes let out a sigh and met my eyes. "Did you know that was going to happen? Is that why you came last night...?" There was no reply to this and so I tried a different track. "There really was a voice, Holmes...Where are we going?"

"Grosenick"

"I've never heard of the place…"

"Grosenick is where the Longstreets last address places them. Besides that, I, too have never heard of the place. It is in the middle of nowhere, Watson. For most of London, the place does not exist. Watson?"

"Yes?."

"I do believe you, my friend. Don't doubt it. I really do."

Grosenick was a tiny place. The homes were tiny. The streets were narrow. Perhaps it had been a Roman town centuries ago and now, it was a shadow of a place. There was a large lake from which a blanket of fog descended that early morning. It gave the whole place a rather dream-like quality.

"We are expected at 9:00." Said Holmes as we made our way up a twisted pathway, cut deeply with wheel trails.

"By whom?"

Holmes did not answer, but the question was satisfied by the bent old woman who answered the door of a rather lonely house on the banks of the lake. "Come in, gentlemen, you are rather punctual, Mr. Holmes and…?"

"Dr. Watson." I provided.

"I am Elaine Longstreet, gentlemen. Please, take a seat, would you like tea?" Without delay, she bustled away and Holmes prowled the place in her absence. I watched him and then glanced at the walls. Portraits of various ages adorned the walls, but one captured my attention. Without realizing it, I found myself rising and coming face to face with a near identical pair of portraits I had seen in the Longstreets' rooms: two sisters with thick blonde hair and dark eyes. I found myself staring into one pair of those eyes rather like staring over the edge of a precipice of no knowable depth.

"That is Persephone." Said Elaine Longstreet as she handed me my cup of tea.

"She and Sarah were always inseparable, perhaps in part due to the fact that Sarah never was totally healthy. Persephone would read to her during the worst of it and I remember how it always seemed the stories had a power to keep her with us, despite it all…

"After their parents died, their brother Jonathan did his best to keep them happy, but things do not always turn out as in the stories. For Sarah and Persephone, there was no simple ending. When Jonathan died all those years ago, those two refused to stay here and I can't blame them. So much sadness in this house. So much loss…"

Holmes spoke up suddenly from behind us. I myself was doing what I could to keep my hands from shaking at what our hostess had just revealed. "How long ago did you say Jonathan died, Mrs. Longstreet?"

"My nephew? Oh, it was years and years ago now. At least five. I haven't seen the girls since, but you have news of them you say? What is it? I would love to hear any news of them. It's been so long, you see…."

_**To Be Continued…**_


End file.
